Christmas Pup

 For the most part Bella is an outside dog.  She has a snug wooden dog house, lots of hay she scratches out the door so she doesn't have to lay on it, and lots of things to bark at as they pass by; wild animals or stray cats for the most part.

But when it is too terribly cold, or when I just don't have time for a long walk I bring her in the house to vary her day, and mine too, of course.  

Rarely does she ever lay on the floor like this, unless I've kept her in overnight, then she curls up on a bed of old towels in the bathroom. Her normal routine when she comes into the house is to make a bee-line for the cat's dishes, then inspect the kitchen floors to see what crumbs she might glean, if any.  After that she takes up her vigil at one or the other of the windows. She will just stand and stare outside for awhile at each window in turn.  I can tell when she actually sees something because she will wag her tail.  

On one particular  morning last week, she'd finally tired of the view from the 3 windows she can gaze out of, so she flopped down in front of the Christmas tree.  And so here she is. 

 Next month she will be 10 years old.  We got her on St Patrick's Day in 2014.  The last puppy from a litter on a sheep farm down by Forsyth, MO, I believe it was.  

Every animal has its own personality, and she certainly does as well.  She should have been trained as a squirrel dog, that's all she wants to do when we go out on our walks.  Except now that they are holed up, she goes after the rats or voles or whatever rodents it is that lives under piles of dead logs and limbs out in the fields.

She is funny to watch; she starts sniffing and snorting and waving her tail around when she gets close to something.  Sometimes I don't get much walking done for watching her.